Heather Gillers

speaker

548 appearances 11 recordings 1 series first heard Nov 2018 last heard Oct 2021

Heather Gillers’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

Trend

recordings per month · last 12 months

No recordings in the last 12 months.Older appearances are listed below; set an alert to hear about the next one.

Appearances

newest first · ▶ plays the moment

WSJ Your Money Briefing · Pension Funds Suffer Record Losses in First Quarter · 12 May 2020 podcast

So oftentimes when you get a report on the value of a public pension's matched

Private equity holdings say what you're really seeing is the value of those holdings one quarter ago. matched

So some of those returns in the portfolio that are baked into that total return actually reflect previous quarters. matched

And we'll have to wait until next quarter to find out what happened this quarter. matched

That's right. matched

There are some very well-funded pension funds. matched

New York State is a good example. matched

But there are also some very poorly funded pension funds. matched

Illinois, New Jersey, Kentucky. matched

California has probably around 70% of the assets it needs to pay future benefits even before this pandemic. matched

So these funds have been struggling for years to make up these deep funding holes. matched

And in an effort to do so, they've taken on more risk and tried to meet very aggressive investment targets. matched

And this past quarter was a real blow to them because when you set your expectations that high, anytime the markets disappoint you, matched

The impact is going to be big. matched

These benefits, a lot of them were set a long time ago when market returns on stocks and bonds were much higher, particularly on bonds. matched

And it was possible to invest with fairly low risk. matched

and get fairly high returns. matched

And that has changed a lot. matched

But these are 30 year promises, and courts have protected them very rigorously and made it difficult to change these benefits. matched

So public pensions are now often stuck in a place where they have promised benefits, but their investments are not growing at a rate that would help them afford those benefits. matched

Showing 161–180 of 548 · page 9 of 28